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George Orwell 1984 Part One Sections 1 - 3 1984 falls naturally into three Parts, with an Appendix on "The Principles of Newspeak" which is extremely important, and which will be analyzed separately in the present study. It will be compared and contrasted with Orwell's key essay, written in 1946, entitled "Politics and the English Language," an essay which contains not only the idea of Newspeak but also many of the concepts embodied more imaginatively in 1984. As the scenes succeed each other the novel is divided further, within each Part, into sections, for Orwell, by a technique of presenting representative scenes from the daily life of Winston Smith in 1984, wishes to paint a picture of the effect of a totalitarian society on the individual. The technique may be called "leaping and lingering," and chronologically the action takes place over a number of months, as Winston becomes aware of the horror of his environment, seeks first to know more about it and then to change it, if necessary by violence, and finally is caught by the Thought Police and utterly destroyed as human being. Part One, containing eight sections of unequal length, deals with Winston's questioning of the system and his dawning self-awareness and introspection (which the Party discourages), as symbolized by the initial step of his keeping a private diary. Part Two, by far the longest of the three Parts, begins with Winston's serious acquaintance with Julia and then his mistaken confidence in O'Brien and his and Julia's commitment, through O'Brien, to the objectives of the secret Brotherhood in its quest for the overthrow of Big Bother. Part Two ends with the capture of the two thoughtcriminals, Winston and Julia, and their imprisonment in the cellars of the Ministry of Love where they are to be tortured. Part Two contains ten sections. Part Three, the shortest and grimmest Part, contains six sections, and deals entirely with the process of torture and brainwashing which Winston undergoes at the hands of O'Brien; it is the climatic portion of the novel. For convenience in the analysis and summary of the work, each of the three Parts will be treated separately, and further dealt with using the division into sections mentioned above. Part One: Section One Because this first section of the novel provides, through the use of exposition, an introduction to the major characters of 1984 as well as to some of the most important structures, ideas, and concepts of the totalitarian society which is the subject of Orwell's satire, it is necessary to analyze it closely. In the opening scene of Part One, we meet Winston Smith, representative man of the society of 1984, walking into his apartment in Victory Mansions, a pretentiously named but broken-down apartment house containing too many people living too close together: a place smelling of boiled cabbage and old rags. The elevators, as is usual, due to the chronic shortage of electric power, are not working, so Winston must walk up seven flights of stairs and through narrow smelly corridors to reach his apartment. The first thing Winston encounters, in the hallway just at the entrance, is a huge colored poster with an enormous face; and rugged face of a strong and forceful man of about forty-five with a heavy black moustache. Similar posters are on each floor, and they are drawn so that the eyes of the face on the poster seem to follow the beholder. At the bottom of the poster is the slogan, in large letters: Big Brother Is Watching You. As Winston walks slowly up the seven flights to his apartment, his varicose ulcer above his right ankle troubles him. Though he is relatively young, he is frail and not in good health, so the climb taxes his strength. See - Huge Poster: A huge colored poster with an enormous face. Winston is dressed in a uniform consisting of blue overalls - the uniform of a member of the Outer Party. This is to symbolize the origins of the party, which claims to be descended from the party of workers, that is, manual and factory workers, and whose philosophy, as another poster outside in the street near Victory Mansions proclaims, is called INGSOC [English Socialism]. As we shall see, the Party of which Winston Smith is a marginal member despises the manual workers, the Proles, though it adopts their dress, and its philosophy has little or nothing to do with English socialism or with any brand of socialism, no matter how loosely that elastic political term is defined. In Winston's apartment, as he enters, there is a voice coming from a telescreen-a sort of built-in metal television screen which is a device found almost everywhere in Oceania. The voice is droning out an interminible rapid monologue about the overfulfillment of the Ninth Three-Year Plan and about pig iron. But Winston, though he can turn it down to a whisper, cannot turn the machine off. Even turning it down might be dangerous, because it is also a transmitter, sending to some central police observation station the picture of everything and everybody in the apartment. Big Brother is indeed watching, though the individual has no knowledge about when he is being watched, but must proceed on the assumption that his every word and expression is under scrutiny by the Party. Looking out the window, Winston can see the tumble-down houses of London, many built in the nineteenth century, interspersed with bomb craters and rows of shacks build in spaces cleared by bombs. Even the appearance of the city has been declining though Winston does not have a real standard of comparison. The only modernistic building on Winston's immediate horizon is an enormous pyramidal white concrete structure, taller than New York's Empire State Building. This is the Ministry of Truth, the propaganda ministry where Winston works and from which he has just come. This building has in huge letter on its face the three slogans of the Party: War Is Peace, Freedom Is Slavery, Ignorance Is Strength. Much of Winston's activity in this work chronicling his decline and fall will involve his learning more about the various meanings of these three slogans. The city of London is the chief city of Airstrip One. Orwell calls England by this name for a good reason in terms of his purpose of political satire: he projected England's place among nations as declining after the end of World War II to the point where she is little more than an airstrip, a military and naval base, for even more powerful countries. Thus England is "the third most populous of the provinces of Oceania." Orwell does not go into more detail about the various countries which make up the superstate of Oceania which is ruled by Big Brother; for maximum specificity he limits his narrative entirely to what takes place during a few months in the lives of several individuals in the capital city of this one province, but the reader is quite able to generalize and to guess for himself what the entire country and society of Oceania is like. Winston, on this crucial date in his life, April 4, 1984, is about to open a diary. As we have seen, it is not illegal for a citizen to keep a diary in 1984 - nothing is illegal, in terms of the violations of written law, but the all-encompassing offense of Thoughtcrime is not denounced by a written set of laws. Everyone "understands" and therefore should not expect to be told in writing what the law is. (See the discussion of "The Law in 1984" below.) But Winston's hand trembles as he begins to write in his diary. He knows that what he vaguely wants to do-to communicate with the future-is impossible. Why should the future listen to him? And what assurance does he have that the future will be any better than the present? Still, he must write. In a small, childish handwriting (Orwell adds this detail to show that most citizens in 1984 are not even used to writing, as there are other, more approved means of communications such as the Speakwrite machine), Winston begins to write in a state of fear and panic. His inner thoughts and feelings, long repressed, pour out of him. He is, one might say, in a trancelike or hysterical state, and it is his unconscious, sickened by the steady diet of violence and deceptive news fed him, which is rebelling and expressing itself. He writes of a movie (a "flick") which he had seen the previous night, in which the featured scene was a ship full of refugees being bombed in the Mediterranean, with the camera showing very graphically how people in lifeboats were then machine-gunned and blown up; "there was a wonderful shot of a child's arm going up up up right up into the air a helicopter with a camera in its nose must have followed it up and there was a lot of applause. . . ." As Winston writes of this brutal scene, his mind is on something quite different, though in a hidden way related at least to the brutality: an experience which he had had that very morning at his place of work in the Ministry of Truth. It was in the Records Department, and at 11:00 A.M. the people who worked in that Department were assembling for a daily ritual, the Two Minutes Hate. He had noticed a girl, about twenty-six or twenty-seven, of attractive appearance and with the sash of the Junior Anti-Sex League would around the waist of her overalls. And at this meeting for the Two Minutes Hate (a ritual which really whipped the people into a hysterical frenzy), the girl gave the impression that she was looking at Winston, sizing him up. He was afraid; she might be an agent of the Thought Police or some other kind of spy. The girl is not the only one who will obtrude on his consciousness this day. There is an urbane, athletic-looking man whom Winston had seen perhaps a dozen times in as many years in which he had worked in the Ministry of Truth, and whom he knows only as O'Brien. He is a member of the Inner Party, wearing the uniform of black overalls which marks out this most important segment of the society of 1984, and he is so important that nobody really knows just what his job is. Winston feels drawn to O'Brien, because his intuition tells him that O'Brien's political orthodoxy is not perfect. O'Brien sits near Winston as the Two Minutes Hate begins on the telescreen. The Hate begins and soon the audience is, in spite of themselves, screeming at the images which appear in the telescreen with fear, rage, and hatred. Emmanuel Goldstein, the Enemy of the People, is presented denouncing the Party and Big Brother, and this is succeeded by the calming figure of Big Brother who will set all things right. The people chant rhythmically, like savages: "B-B! . . . B-B! . . B-B!" over and over again. But even as the Hate rises to a climax, Winston catches O'Brien's eyes, and perceives therein a flash of recognition. I am on your side, O'Brien's expression seems to say to Winston; I, too, hate them! Back in his apartment, as he thinks of the scene that morning, Winston Smith writes uncontrollably: Down With Big Brother. He repeats it again, many times in fact. While doing this he knows that he has crossed the point of no return. They (the Thought Police, the authorities) will get him now; it is inevitable. But meanwhile he allows himself to think his own thoughts. He knows that he will be vaporized, which is the usual Party word for what happens to those who are found to be unorthodox politically. They "disappear," often with no advance warning, and often even their closest relatives do not know what happened to them nor do they dare to ask. "I don't care . . . they can shoot me. . ." Winston tells him if, inwardly, while afflicted with an awful fear as, with a knock on the door of his apartment which recalls him to "reality," the scene ends. Comment This initial section of Part One is a brilliant exposition of the world of 1984. Its technique is that of drama, in which things are not stated to the audience or reader, but are shown through action. Part of the life which Orwell is able to impart to his characters who, after all, are political abstractions in the grip of an iron political system-especially the believability of Winston Smith-stems from Orwell's skillful and economical dramatic handling of his material. We are not told all about Winston Smith, but we seem to know him through this dramatic presentation of his character. Since the first section of Part One raises so many issues, it may be in order here simply to analyze and comment on the more important of these: 1. Introduction of the central characters: Section One of Part One serves to introduce and partly to characterize all three of the principals of the story, Winston Smith, O'Brien, and the girl, not yet identified by name, who works in the Ministry of Truth with Winston. Though we cannot guess the connections, we know that somehow the lives of these three are to be closely related throughout the action of 1984; Winston himself senses this, subconsciously, during the Two Minutes Hate. 2. Use of psychology; mass conditioning: We can see early that Orwell is presenting a study of Winston Smith's psychology, and through this a picture of how totalitarianism acts on a representative "average man." There is no doubt that the society which is outlined in 1984, even in the first section of Part One, is totalitarian, though the paradoxical three slogans of the Party which tend to support this impression of the society are not yet explained. But the presentation of Winston's unconscious and semiconscious activities, his hysterical writing in his secret diary, and the state of fear in which he lives, give us an inkling that part of Orwell's interest is in the psychology of such a man as Winston. The Two Minutes Hate, with the shifting scenes of violence; the alternation of a hated object (Goldstein and the Eurasion soldiers) followed by the loved object (Big Brother), with this constantly repeated, apparently every day, shows the possibility of psychological conditioning of the people. All must love Big Brother as the embodiment of the rightness of the Party's decisions; the Two Minutes Hate, though it seems absurd, is no more absurd than some of the torchlight processions and the inflammatory speeches, filled with hatred, which Orwell described as occurring in the totalitarian nations of the 1930s and 40s. 3. The corruption of things into empty forms: This point involves the brilliant satire in which Orwell shows how in all human society, but especially in totalitarian society, mere forms are retained and myths are perpetuated after the life has gone from them. Thus, the Outer Party wears the uniform of blue overalls and the Inner Party black overalls to symbolize the working-class origin of the Party, the successor to the Socialist parties of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. But the overalls are an empty symbol. The Party claims to have "rescued the worker" from the evils of capitalism, yet the shortage of the basis necessities of life among all subordinate classes, other than the elite of the Inner Party, has never been more acute. And it never seems to get any better. Along with the now dead symbol of the overalls goes the philosophy known in 1984 as Ingsoc-English Socialism. Whatever it is called, the actual philosophy of government of 1984 is not socialism; it is better described as Oligarchical Collectivism, as it is in fact called in the book which is purportedly written by Goldstein to explain the aims of the society of Oceania and which Winston reads before his arrest as a Thoughtcriminal. 4. The pervasive fear and hysteria in the society of 1984: This is dramatically evidenced by the omnipresence of the telescreens, the Two Minutes Hate with its hypnotic associations, its building up of hatred of Big Brother's enemies, and its antirationalism, as well as by the furtive nature of Winston Smith's behavior when he simply begins to write a diary, surely by normal standards not a criminal offense. But it places him in deadly peril, for it may indicate to the Thought Police who watch everybody that he has thoughts which he is hiding. 5. The conspiracy against Big Brother: The name of Emmanuel Goldstein, Thoughtcrime, and the book are first revealed here. In terms of the historical political allegory of 1984, Goldstein represents the Russian revolutionary leader Lev Davidovich Bronstein, better known to the world by the name of Leon Trotsky, who was one of the leaders of the Russian Revolution, and was branded by his archrival Stalin as an Enemy of the People and ultimately assassinated while in exile in Mexico. Big Brother has some of the characteristics and the appearance of Josef Stalin himself. But these two figures embodying the Party and its history in 1984 are only suggestive of those they are modeled upon; Orwell, in his effort to universalize his theme, wanted them to stand for more than Stalin and Trotsky. He is writing about totalitarianism, and as Orwell uses them these historic actors in the development and change of a totalitarian regime may stand for other such figures. 6. The brutalization of society: Orwell presents so-called civilized society as having regressed by 1984. The machine-gunning of defenseless women and children, the showing of such scenes of brutality in the films, and the callousness of the audience watching these films are intended to show that society has gone backwards. It is less sensitive to human suffering and, as Orwell will show subsequently, the Party wants things to be this way. 7. The chronic shortage of material comforts: Just as public taste has regressed by 1984, so has the standard of living. While Ingsoc purports to have improved the lot of the ordinary man, there are not enough of the simple necessities of life to go around: food, electric power, even razor blades for a good shave. Housing is poor, old, dark, smelly, and overcrowded, Orwell, as can be inferred from his biography, was acutely conscious of the physical side of life in its less attractive aspects, and he shows Winston Smith, in the midst of such unappetizing surroundings, as a figure worn down by fear as well as by simple material deprivation. 8. The lack of clearly defined positive law in 1984: This final point is so important in terms of Orwell's critique of the nature of totalitarian government that a separate essay on the subject has been included in this Guide to 1984. Constitutional government, a government of laws and not of men, has clearly defined limits to its power. But in the totalitarian government of 1984 there are no limits, and the individual has no rights guaranteed to him by any constitution or code of law. Indeed, the most serious crime does not necessarily involve an overt action; Thoughtcrime, though a capital offense, may be just a thought. All of these points are further developed by Orwell, but it is necessary to be alert to their presence in the first expository section of Part One of 1984, for they are all important to the meaning of the book. (CONTINUED) |
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